Friday, September 30, 2016

I didn't get to work on the Warlord Titan very much the past few days. I mostly blame the oven-like wind that was here all week. I did manage to trim & wash the remaining parts for the body.

And all the armor plates while I was at it.

I can already tell some of the big parts are really warped. Yay, more boiling water fun. All the smaller parts went onto the torso, but I need to prime and start some painting before any more assembling can continue.

The main weapon arms look like they are going to be, you know, challenging. Three different parts make up the joints, so we could give it a large range of motion, which nobody does. Because it's a huge Imperial Titan, not some nimbly-pimbly Eldar. After the priming I'll have to start on the main weapons so I can get the arm pose correct. Next week: Guns & Paints.

Hail the Omnissiah! He is the God in the Machine, the Source
of All Knowledge.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Back long ago, GW released the awesome 2002 calendar. On September 29th it said "Emperor's Birthday". I have never found any other background to support this, but today is as good a date as any. So Happy Bithday to the one who taught us what is best in life, and then conquered most of galaxy. I hope the Custodes put a little birthday hat on him.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Setting the towering legs aside for a bit, it's time to tackle the torso. Or Steps 14-26 as they are known as in the construction tome. Once again it was sort, trim, and wash. This time with fewer and larger parts.

I didn't get any pics during the formation of the main "box" that makes up the torso because my hands were very full and I was uttering many harsh oaths to the Machine God, Forge World, and Jeff. The fit was very tricky. I kinda needed four big parts to come together all at the same time. Oh yes, quite challenging. The main side walls had been badly warped and required trips to the boiling water to rectify. Eventually. As did the curved armor plate over the neck. After that the rest of the smaller parts was a breeze.

Do not try this at your Manufactorium without a good supply of large and small squeeze clamps on hand. And a coping saw, boiling water, band aids, and rum. Overall, the assembly went well and pretty quick. It is coming along, but so much more to be done.

Friday, September 16, 2016

It begins. The madness of of over two hundred parts made out of finicky resin. It is a bit overwhelming. So, like all huge projects, I'm going to break it down into a lot small projects. The first thirteen steps are "just" the legs. So I'll get that going. First up, the parts sort:

Keep in mind those squares on the hobbymat are 1". This is a huge kit, and we haven't gotten to the really big parts yet. That is all the parts needed for the legs. It took a few hours to trim and wash all these parts.

The legs are by far the most,...let's go with challenging, because I want to refrain from using profanity on this blog. I used plenty of colorful profanities while attempting to pose and glue the legs. They did go together eventually to my liking, mostly. The right leg has a slight tilt inwards, but the hip connector is level (yes, I used a level) and it has a very solid stance. Which is good, because it will be supporting a whole lot of weight very soon.

I'm going to pin some of the joints with 1/8" brass rod. Then black primer with a light dusting of Titanium spray paint as a base coat.

It has been a lot of work, with a little bit of blood spilled, but very enjoyable to bring such a large project together. I'm sure many new exciting pitfalls await the next stage of construction.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Time for some BBQ and 40k battles! We have yet to try out the fun of hot, Knight-on-Knight action. Fortunately, Peter is building a household of Knights under new management. He brought a pair still under construction to do battle with the Imperial lapdogs.

The Hydra

The Dark Paladin

The two Fallen Knights were joined by a Lord of Skulls for a nice 1703 point force. In the first battle I took my Four Horsemen. It made for a swift match. Minor damage was done by each side in the shooting phases. The real fun happened in close combat.

Four Super-heavy walkers enter, one Lord of Skulls leaves. It gets really bloody when everyone has Destroyer close combat weapons. Very entertaining though.

On the other flank, The Baron took down the twin battlecannon armed Chaos Knight in close combat. Even without a D weapon it still did a good amount of damage to the Baron's suit.

The badly damage Baron charged the damaged and very angry Lord of Skulls. Stupid Daemon saves.

However, in the next shooting phase my last Knight, a Crusader brought the Lord of Skulls down with a hail of fire from the Avenger Gatling Cannon. Narrow win for the Imperium!

The second battle saw Matt's Blood Angels with a new friend. He had just finished his new Freeblade, Scriptum. Named as such because its armor is cover in the text of its glorious deeds. Matt painted them on with a brush. The effect is quite striking.

Scriptum

Unfortunately I had camera problems during the second battle, brought on by too much Rum. So the few shots I did take are all blurry. Sorry Matt and Peter! The game did end in a win for Chaos.

The next time we try a big mech fight we will bring in some hapless infantry and see how that goes. Overall the games were fun and fast. It was nice have a lot of the big models on the table.